Sgt. Clay Ballenger of the Tulsa Police Department serves as president of the Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 93. In his fourth year in the role, Ballenger’s goals have been to find a dedicated funding source for public safety, to improve officers’ compensation and to increase the city’s number of officers.
Edmond’s sales tax revenue, on the other hand, increased 4.3 percent from 2014-15. City of Tulsa budget woes also caused the layoffs of 127 TPD officers in 2010, Ballenger says, and the department hasn’t recovered. Fortunately, the public safety portion of the Vision 2025 tax extension, which takes effect Jan. 1, 2017, will fund the hiring of 160 officers. (A 2015 study funded by the George Kaiser Family Foundation called for the hiring of 200 more officers to meet the needs of Tulsa crime patterns.) But the tax extension will not increase the compensation of TPD’s 750 existing officers. Without a sales tax increase or a more stable funding source, this is unlikely to improve. “At some point, if the city wants the services the City is expected to provide, they are going to have to be willing to pay for that,” Ballenger says. In his fourth year as president of the FOP — which negotiates TPD’s contract with the City and supports its members, TPD’s rank and file — Ballenger says his goals have been threepart: to try to find a dedicated funding source for public safety, to try to improve officers’ compensation and to increase the city’s number of officers. 42
TulsaPeople MAY 2016
“We have fewer officers than we had 25 years ago,” he says. “We have more to do, more area to cover, a bigger population and fewer officers. “We don’t have time to be proactive because we’re subject to just responding to 911 calls.” Ballenger says TPD’s police academies have been 50-75 percent full over the past three years or so. He suspects the City’s reputation for canceling past academies might play a part in the low turnouts but also notes cadets can make more money nearly anywhere else. Removing the department’s education requirement would potentially expand the talent pool; TPD is one of few police departments in the country to require officers to have a bachelor’s degree. But Ballenger says he is concerned doing so would attract applicants of lesser quality, as would removing the requirement that even experienced transfers attend TPD academies. In addition, he says that cities with higher pay but no degree requirement are attracting candidates with bachelor’s degrees. Most candidates these days have their degree and are simply looking where the pay is. TPD’s detailed compensation package, available at www.tulsapolice.org, might seem generous when taken at face value. But Ballenger weighs it against the reality of the occupation.
“As police officers, we take an oath to give our life, if need be, to protect the citizens of this city,” he says. “What price can you put on that oath — that I’m willing to die for people I don’t know?”
UNHEALTHY CONSEQUENCES
Most people will never experience the situations police encounter regularly on the job. Sgt. Justin Farley supervises TPD’s Crisis Intervention Response Team (CIRT), a group of 30 officers trained to respond to their peers after incidents such as officer-involved shootings, deaths of infants, fatalities or other situations as needed. Group members perform CIRT duties in addition to their normal police duties. Officers who experience these situations are offered mental health resources to help them “get back to normal,” Farley says. But he says most people underestimate the mental strain law enforcement work takes on the men and women in uniform — and their families. Occupational stress and the nature of shift work contribute to a divorce rate of at least 6070 percent among law enforcement officers, compared to the national average of 40-50 percent. Research from the early ’90s also